70 Years Since Hiroshima

POSTED BY: Magonsdaughter
UPDATED: Saturday, August 8, 2026 10:26
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SECOND

Sunday, August 9, 2015 1:05 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

The concept was that an American demonstration of sheer brutality and willingness to kill would stop the Russians in their tracks. The second bomb was to induce a question in Russian minds as to HOW MANY atomic bombs the USA had.

This mind trick only works until the Russians also have the Bomb.

But after WWII, America spent 8 trillion dollars building nukes and rockets, hoping to intimidate Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev. I claim spending to put a permanent American colony on Mars would have been more intimidating to the Russians, cheaper for the Americans, and less hazardous to life on Earth.

Russia built the Bomb to show they were not intimidated. For every bomb America built, Russia built one, which was a waste for both sides. When America landed on the Moon, the Russians had their own Moon program to show they would not be intimidated. If America landed on Mars, the Russians would have been intimidated.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

SECOND

Sunday, August 9, 2015 1:21 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Quote:
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
The Allies waged acts of terror against civilians in world war 2, the bombing of Dresden...the unpaletable side of war is that at times the aim is to kill as many civilians as possible in order to demoralise.

I suppose it depends upon whether you think the means justifies the ends in these matters.

Your logic fails completely. Trying to imagine strategy and causes to fit your pre-ordained effects and conclusions does not serve your argument well.
Dresden was filled with factories producing weapons and military equipment to wage war upon the world. It had a rail distribution which served to disperse combat troops to wage war upon the world - a logistical sweet target. Trying to hide these military targets amidst "civilians" who are waging war against the world is a poor argument from you, but might be why you would support Hamas firing missiles from schoolyards amid children so you can blame the defenders for children dying when the combat launchers were eliminated.
Targeting valid and critical sweet juicy military targets in wartime is not the same as targeting "civilians" at war with the world, and for you to not understand that simple concept speaks poorly of you and your mental ability.

In the Dresden raid, major industrial areas in the suburbs, which stretched for miles, were not targeted. According to Donald Miller "the economic disruption would have been far greater had Bomber Command targeted the suburban areas where most of Dresden's manufacturing might was concentrated". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II#Milit
ary_and_industrial_profile

Let Winston Churchill explain Dresden:

Churchill subsequently distanced himself from the bombing.[97][103][104] On 28 March, in a memo sent by telegram to General Ismay for the British Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff, he wrote:

It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land… The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing. I am of the opinion that military objectives must henceforward be more strictly studied in our own interests than that of the enemy.

The Foreign Secretary has spoken to me on this subject, and I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive.[105][106]

KPO

Sunday, August 9, 2015 2:00 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

The concept was that an American demonstration of sheer brutality and willingness to kill would stop the Russians in their tracks. The second bomb was to induce a question in Russian minds as to HOW MANY atomic bombs the USA had.
This mind trick only works until the Russians also have the Bomb.

But after WWII, America spent 8 trillion dollars building nukes and rockets, hoping to intimidate Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev. I claim spending to put a permanent American colony on Mars would have been more intimidating to the Russians, cheaper for the Americans, and less hazardous to life on Earth.

Russia built the Bomb to show they were not intimidated. For every bomb America built, Russia built one, which was a waste for both sides. When America landed on the Moon, the Russians had their own Moon program to show they would not be intimidated. If America landed on Mars, the Russians would have been intimidated.

OK lets's play the counter-factual game.

If America didn't have the Bomb the USSR would have steamrollered Western Europe at some point post 1945. And without the cost of a nuclear arms race with America, perhaps that regime would still be standing. I think 8 trillion is a small price to pay when you're talking about the freedom and prosperity of an entire continent, for 100 years or more.

There's also the matter of Japan as well, of course. Japan is now a prosperous, mature democracy. Can anyone explain how that could have come about without the USA dropping bombs on it?

It's not personal. It's just war.

1KIKI

Sunday, August 9, 2015 3:15 AM

conjectures - not facts

First of all - it was Russia that won WWII in Europe. Without the eastern front sapping resources Germany would have been in a much stronger position vis-a-vis the allies. But Russia sustained phenomenal losses in soldiers, civilians, equipment and infrastructure:

http://www.eisenhowerinstitute.org/about/living_history/wwii_soviet_ex
perience.dot

What separates the battle histories of the war east of Berlin from the war west of it is the level of savagery. In the major western battles, such as Falaise and The Bulge, the Anglo-American generals used tactics designed to encircle and capture their adversary. In the eastern battles there was mainly direct frontal attack with brute force that didn't stop short of annihilation. Even the numbers reflect the difference. In the west, the 3,000,000 man Allied army killed 834,314 German soldiers and, through the strategic bombing campaigns, about 250,000 civilians. In the east, where neither side had a strategic bombing force, less than six million Germans killed eleven million Soviet soldiers and at least seven million civilians ... all of it face-to-face and on the ground. Even General Eisenhower, no stranger to war-damaged towns and cities, was appalled by the extent of depopulation and wrote in his memoir:

"When we flew into Russia, in 1945, I did not see a house standing between the western borders of the country and the area around Moscow. Through this overrun region, Marshal Zhukov told me, so many numbers of women, children and old men had been killed that the Russian Government would never be able to estimate the total."

Russia wasn't in a position to immediately launch an offensive against the west.

And then, a mere 4 years after the US used nuclear weapons on Japan, Russia tested its own nuclear bomb.

http://www.coldwar.org/articles/40s/soviet_atomic_bomb_test.asp

On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb. It came as a great shock to the United States because they were not expecting the Soviet Union to possess nuclear weapon knowledge so soon.

That 'deterrence' against an attack on Europe lasted all of 4 years.

There's good evidence that it was ultimately Afghanistan that broke Russia, not the cold war. After all, the Russian economy grew from a primitive agrarian medieval economy into a world-class industrial one during the time it was supposedly crippled by the cold war. I'd say that's not very good evidence for your supposition.

Japan is now a prosperous*, mature democracy. Can anyone explain how that could have come about without the USA dropping bombs on it?

Germany is also a prosperous, mature democracy. And yet, it didn't have atomic bombs dropped on it. Golly gee, how did that happen?

Could it possibly be due to the post-war reconstruction programs that were implemented in those two countries?

* The Japanese economy has been stagnating for 20 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_%28Japan%29 - the whole period of the 1990s to the present is referred to as the Lost Two Decades or the Lost 20 Years

SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

1KIKI

Sunday, August 9, 2015 3:32 AM

What I find interesting about WWII is that the leaders of Axis powers Germany, Japan and Italy, and minor axis player Spain, all personally knew, admired, emulated and supported each other. (In Japan's case the leader was Hideki Tojo, not Hirohito. OTOH the racist hatreds against all 'inferior' races - non-Japanese and presumably non-German that Japan displayed by phenomenally brutal massacres of soldiers and civilians alike - that Tojo also espoused after his rise to power - had Hirohito's enthusiastic support.)

(You'll see perverse echoes of the idea of Japanese racial superiority today - for example against the victims of Fukushima fallout, who are shunned. The idea is that they're insufficiently 'Japanese' and so unable to resist its effects.)

SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

1KIKI

Sunday, August 9, 2015 4:15 AM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

An RAF memo issued to airmen on the night of the attack said:
Dresden, the seventh largest city in Germany and not much smaller than Manchester is also the largest unbombed builtup area the enemy has got. In the midst of winter with refugees pouring westward and troops to be rested, roofs are at a premium, not only to give shelter to workers, refugees, and troops alike, but to house the administrative services displaced from other areas. At one time well known for its china, Dresden has developed into an industrial city of first-class importance.... The intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it most, behind an already partially collapsed front... and incidentally to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do.[39][31]

In the raid, major industrial areas in the suburbs, which stretched for miles, were not targeted.[8] According to Donald Miller "the economic disruption would have been far greater had Bomber Command targeted the suburban areas where most of Dresden's manufacturing might was concentrated."

SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

SIGNYM

Sunday, August 9, 2015 5:06 AM

Quote:
It was not an act of terror. It was an act of negotiation. Japan had refused to make any negotiations, other than to make clear that they would fight and kill to the end, no matter their own casualties. They insisted upon suicidal strategy. The first bomb helped them see the error of their ways and plans, yet they still insisted upon their suicidal strategy. They still refused to make any negotiations. The second bomb on the 9th (70 years ago now in Japan) helped them see the futility of their plans, that they really would just continue to decimate themselves with little or no casualties to us.

That is not an act of terror. That is an act of education. A demonstration of a promise that perhaps they had not believed or understood clearly until we made good on our promise to defeat them.- JSF

Not only is this a sheer historic-fact-fail, it's a sheer LOGIC fail.

Russia was there, ready and willing to take on the Japanese. Why didn't we just let them do the job? To be pellucidly clear, the only two options available to the USA (and Japan) WEREN'T just "surrender or be bombed". There were any number of coordinated invasion plans which the USA could have particpated in whatever percentage it chose.

This is from Foreign Policy Magazine, a pro-western, pro-CFR publication if there ever was one. It disputes the notion that "the bombs" played a role in the surrender of the Japanese. Instead, it points to the role of the Russian invasion, which began between the first bomb and the second, and changed Russia's role from official neutral to official belligerent. I think the author makes a good case for that viewpoint.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-d
id/

Quote:
The U.S. use of nuclear weapons against Japan during World War II has long been a subject of emotional debate. Initially, few questioned President Truman’s decision to drop two atomic bombs, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But, in 1965, historian Gar Alperovitz argued that, although the bombs did force an immediate end to the war, Japan’s leaders had wanted to surrender anyway and likely would have done so before the American invasion planned for November 1. Their use was, therefore, unnecessary. Obviously, if the bombings weren’t necessary to win the war, then bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was wrong. In the 48 years since, many others have joined the fray: some echoing Alperovitz and denouncing the bombings, others rejoining hotly that the bombings were moral, necessary, and life-saving.

Both schools of thought, however, assume that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with new, more powerful weapons did coerce Japan into surrendering on August 9. They fail to question the utility of the bombing in the first place — to ask, in essence, did it work? The orthodox view is that, yes, of course, it worked. The United States bombed Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, when the Japanese finally succumbed to the threat of further nuclear bombardment and surrendered. The support for this narrative runs deep. But there are three major problems with it, and, taken together, they significantly undermine the traditional interpretation of the Japanese surrender.

Timing

The first problem with the traditional interpretation is timing. And it is a serious problem...

The traditional interpretation has a simple timeline: The U.S. Army Air Force bombs Hiroshima with a nuclear weapon on August 6, three days later they bomb Nagasaki with another, and on the next day the Japanese signal their intention to surrender.* One can hardly blame American newspapers for running headlines like: "Peace in the Pacific: Our Bomb Did It!"

When the story of Hiroshima is told in most American histories, the day of the bombing — August 6 — serves as the narrative climax. All the elements of the story point forward to that moment: the decision to build a bomb, the secret research at Los Alamos, the first impressive test, and the final culmination at Hiroshima.

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1KIKI

Sunday, August 9, 2015 5:22 AM

Finally, as to whether or not A-bombs were vital on the Japanese war front - I've come across many different analyses over the years, from the idea that it was done as a threat to Russia, and Japan was merely the unfortunate example, to the idea it was vital to ending the war quickly, and ultimately saving lives.

As losses mounted, Tojo suggested - and Hirohito implemented - Bushido among military and civilians alike. Death - either in battle or by suicide - was far better than capture or, worse, surrender. This ethic was inculcated for many years.

The result was that soldiers fought fanatically to the death,

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/07/05/national/history/battle-sa
ipan-brutal-invasion-claimed-55000-lives/#.VcaFinZXais
Out of the entire Japanese garrison of 30,000 troops, only 921 prisoners were captured; the rest died. The Japanese commanders, and some 5,000 others committed suicide rather than surrender.

and civilians committed mass suicide.

(In Okinawa alone) 42,000–150,000 local civilians were killed or committed suicide ...

All during this time Gen Curtis LeMay was running high volume conventional air-strikes against the main Japanese islands in the hope of reducing their will to fight - which failed completely.

Another statistic I've run across is that for every Japanese soldier killed in battle - and many were killed in pointless charges at unobtainable and meaningless targets - at least 10 died of starvation or disease. That you would wantonly kill your soldiers or let them die OF STARVATION and disease through a simple failure to consider adequately providing them, is inconceivable to me. But also, the soldiers themselves went mutely along with it, rather than revolt, surrender, or desert.

So the experience in the Pacific was that a ground invasion of the large Japanese islands themselves looked to be bloody and perhaps impossible, and conventional air-strikes didn't work.

Against this is the fact that by this time Tojo had already resigned in disgrace, and Hirohito was discussing surrender on certain conditions.

But the US wanted unconditional surrender. And there was concern that even IF Hirohito ordered it, the Bushido ethic that had been drilled so deeply into the Japanese military and civilians by the Military Secret Police, Tojo, and Hirohito himself, might be irreversible.

The whole question for me falls into the nebulous 'what might have been if ...' territory, and I'm not sure I know enough to recognize a conclusive answer, even it it was n front of me.

SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

SECOND

Sunday, August 9, 2015 5:41 AM

The man who saved Kyoto from the atomic bomb
www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33755182

In early June 1945, Secretary of War Henry Stimson ordered Kyoto to be removed from the target list.

"The military didn't want it removed so it kept putting Kyoto back on the list until late July but Stimson went directly to President Truman," says Prof Wellerstein.

Stimson argued that it was of cultural importance and that it was not a military target. Kyoto, which is home to more than 2,000 Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, including 17 World Heritage Sites, was at the top of the list. The scientists on the Target Committee preferred Kyoto because it was home to many universities and they thought the people there would be able to understand that an atomic bomb was not just another weapon - that it was almost a turning point in human history.

After holding a discussion with the President, Mr Stimson wrote in his diary on 24 July 1945 that "he was particularly emphatic in agreeing with my suggestion that if elimination was not done, the bitterness which would be caused by such a wanton act might make it impossible during the long post-war period to reconcile the Japanese to us in that area rather than to the Russians".

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